In a data communication system, a multiport switch may be provided to enable data communication between various physical layer devices connected to ports of the switch. The IEEE 802 standard defines physical layer protocols and interfaces that govern data transmission between physical layer devices. In particular, the IEEE 802.3 standard developed for Ethernet networks requires each physical layer device (PHY) to incorporate a status register that indicates the status of the PHY. For example, the IEEE 802.3 status register contains link transmission bits that indicate the ability of the PHY to operate in specific link transmission and reception modes such as full duplex or half duplex modes, link status bits, a preamble suppression bit that indicates whether the PHY will accept management frames with preamble suppressed, jabber detect bits indicating whether or not the jabber condition is invoked, auto-negotiation bits indicating the ability of the PHY to perform the IEEE 802.3 auto-negotiation protocol, etc.
To obtain status information from an external PHY, a network controller or switch reads the status register of the PHY. As a multiport data communication switch supports data communication between multiple physical layer devices, it would be desirable to provide the switch that performs an auto-polling procedure to interrogate in succession every external PHY connected to the switch.
Furthermore, it would be desirable to combine the auto-polling procedure with a direct management access to a particular PHY connected to the switch.